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TDR: The Drama Review 44.2 (2000) 7-29



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Denise Stoklos:
The Politics of Decipherability

Diana Taylor

Plates


I

IMAGE LINK= The stage at La MaMa's Annex theatre space in New York City is flat, white, and almost bare. Upstage center, a forest of thick ropes hangs from the ceiling. Upstage right, we can barely see the clotheshorse under a heavy fur coat. And on the opposite side of the stage a small, simple clothes rack and chair complete the minimalist effect of this stark setting. Eight TV sets hang suspended above the entire front of the stage, initially hidden by a black partition. The futuristic, gnawing strings of the Kronos Quartet ring out just as the flood of flat white light washes the stage. Off in the corner, poking out from the simple white curtain, we see a black-booted foot. In slow-motion, s/he walks onstage in exaggerated, giant steps (plate 1). Wearing a tuxedo, complete with vest and top hat, her look is enigmatic, androgynous. The suit is male-ish for a woman, though the curved lines and frilled shirt of the tuxedo make it feminine-ish for a man. Red lips prepare us for the mass of blond electric hair with the signature black roots that she sets free as she bows to the audience, removing her top hat. Half-Thoreau, half-ringmaster, she ushers in her own performance, minimalist in staging, maximalist in the intensity of the corporeal images that fill the space. Using mime, she writes illegible letters in the air. So begins this inquiry into transnational decipherability by Brazil's most renowned solo performer, Denise Stoklos.

IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= Civil Disobedience: Morning Is When I Am Awake and There Is an Aurora in Me (1999), based on texts by Henry David Thoreau 1 as written, directed, and performed by Stoklos, explores the possibilities of freedom--political, individual, sexual, artistic--in a society that keeps people needy and confined. Then--Thoreau's 19th-century New England--and now, in the throes of rampant capitalism at the end of the 20th century, this performance shows people weighed down, cramped, tormented, even driven to the point of madness by society's imperative for compliance. "The twelve labors of Hercules," Stoklos quotes Thoreau, "were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end" (1986:47). The narrative, like the clotheshorse, serves as a minimalist structure on which to hang her performance. Thoreau's/Stoklos's move to the woods (the forest of ropes bathed in green lighting) was meant as a temporary withdrawal from civilization in order to test those elements of life that were in fact "essential" [End Page 7] (plate 2). S/He withstands the pangs of loneliness for civilization, only to be carted off to jail (again, the ropes, now transformed by red lighting) for not paying taxes (plate 3). Upon release against her/his will the following day s/he understands that s/he is as "free" in society as out in the woods. The ropes, as both nature and jail, occupy the same mental space. Images of freedom, in Latin America as elsewhere, only exist in proximity to the reality of oppression. In a variety of registers, ranging from humor to poetic introspection to longing, Stoklos's words and body language ask two recurring questions: What is essential to human happiness? How can we communicate with each other? The questions are urgent: Denise Stoklos performs against the clock. She has come, she tells us, to welcome the new millennium. The countdown, made visible on all eight TV sets, makes her hurry to get her message out, "while there is still life" (plate 4). Theatre, for Denise Stoklos, is neither about recreation nor entertainment: "It's to gain time"(Stoklos 1992a:47). [End Page 8]

IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= IMAGE LINK= What makes this performance so compelling, aside from the urgency of the questions, is Stoklos's conceptual magic act--she juggles signs, images, words, gestures, keeping them all in the air at the same time. Pulling all sorts of modes out of her...

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